Regarding a belt member, used for, for example, a belt layer of a pneumatic tire, a reinforcement cord embedded in a rubber member constitutes a direction skewed to a tire peripheral direction, and therefore, a strip-like material embedded with reinforcement cords of a number of pieces of steel cords to align in a rubber member is cut skewedly by a length in correspondence with a belt width of a tire constituting an object of fabrication, and respective cut strip-like pieces are aligned such that cut ends thereof constitute both side edges to bond sides thereof to thereby fabricate the belt member.
The belt member in a prolonged shape fabricated as described above is temporarily wound in a roll-like shape, the belt member is cut by a predetermined length while drawing out by each predetermined length in a tire molding step and is used for molding a belt layer.
Further, in recent years, while fabricating a predetermined length of a belt member by successively bonding strip-like pieces cut skewedly as described above, the belt member is directly supplied to a molding drum to mold the belt layer (JP-A-11-99564 and JP-A-2000-280373).
Meanwhile, the strip-like material used for fabricating the belt member is fabricated by a step separate from a step of fabricating the belt member and is supplied to the step of fabricating the belt member in a state of being wound in a roll-like shape. Therefore, in order to continuously fabricate the belt member, it is necessary that while fabricating the belt member by drawing out the strip-like material from a member of winding the strip-like material, when a terminal end of the strip-like material of one winding member comes, the terminal end portion is connected with a start end portion of the strip-like material of a next winding member to continuously supply.
At this occasion, it is troublesome and takes time and labor to connect the terminal end portion of the strip-like material of the one winding member and the start end portion of the strip-like material of the next winding member by manual labor, further, occasionally, it is also necessary to temporarily stop driving an apparatus of fabricating the belt member, which is extremely inefficient. Particularly, in a case in which while fabricating a predetermined length of the belt member, the belt member is directly supplied to the molding drum to mold the belt layer, there is also a case in which a concern of temporarily interrupting molding of the tire is brought about.
The above-described problem is not limited to fabrication of the belt material but a similar problem is posed in fabricating other member constituting a material by a long strip-like material mainly embedded with cords in a rubber member, for example, in fabricating, for example, a carcass ply member or the like, in a case of connecting a terminal end of a strip-like material and a start end portion of a next strip-like material for continuously supplying the strip-like material.
Patent Reference 1: JP-A-11-99564
Patent Reference 2: JP-A-2000-280373